Uprooted Palestinians are at the heart of the conflict in the M.E Palestinians uprooted by force of arms. Yet faced immense difficulties have survived, kept alive their history and culture, passed keys of family homes in occupied Palestine from one generation to the next.

Saturday, 28 February 2015

“OUR BROTHERS ARE there,” Khalid said when he heard I was going to Ukraine. “Buy a local SIM card when you get there, send me the number and then wait for someone to call you.”

Khalid, who uses a pseudonym, leads the Islamic State’s underground branch in Istanbul. He came from Syria to help control the flood of volunteers arriving in Turkey from all over the world, wanting to join the global jihad. Now, he wanted to put me in touch with Rizvan, a “brother” fighting with Muslims in Ukraine.

The “brothers” are members of ISIS and other underground Islamic organizations, men who have abandoned their own countries and cities. Often using pseudonyms and fake identities, they are working and fighting in the Middle East, Africa and the Caucasus, slipping across borders without visas. Some are fighting to create a new Caliphate — heaven on earth. Others — like Chechens, Kurds and Dagestanis — say they are fighting for freedom, independence and self-determination. They are on every continent, and in almost every country, and now they are in Ukraine, too.

In the West, most look at the war in Ukraine as simply a battle between Russian-backed separatists and the Ukrainian government. But the truth on the ground is now far more complex, particularly when it comes to the volunteer battalions fighting on the side of Ukraine. Ostensibly state-sanctioned, but not necessarily state-controlled, some have been supported by Ukrainian oligarchs, and others by private citizens. Less talked about, however, is the Dudayev battalion, named after the first president of Chechnya, Dzhokhar Dudayev, and founded by Isa Munayev, a Chechen commander who fought in two wars against Russia.

Ukraine is now becoming an important stop-off point for the brothers, like Rizvan. In Ukraine, you can buy a passport and a new identity. For $15,000, a fighter receives a new name and a legal document attesting to Ukrainian citizenship. Ukraine doesn’t belong to the European Union, but it’s an easy pathway for immigration to the West. Ukrainians have few difficulties obtaining visas to neighboring Poland, where they can work on construction sites and in restaurants, filling the gap left by the millions of Poles who have left in search of work in the United Kingdom and Germany.

You can also do business in Ukraine that’s not quite legal. You can earn easy money for the brothers fighting in the Caucasus, Syria and Afghanistan. You can “legally” acquire unregistered weapons to fight the Russian-backed separatists, and then export them by bribing corrupt Ukrainian customs officers.

“Our goal here is to get weapons, which will be sent to the Caucasus,” Rizvan, the brother who meets me first in Kiev, admits without hesitation.

WITH HIS WHITE hair and beard, Rizvan is still physically fit, even at 57. He’s been a fighter his entire adult life. Born in a small mountain village in the Caucasus, on the border between Dagestan and Chechnya, Rizvan belongs to an ethnic minority known as the Lak, who are predominantly Sunni Muslim.

The world that Rizvan inhabits — the world of the brothers — is something new. When he first became a fighter, there wasn’t any Internet or cell phones, or cameras on the street, or drones. Rizvan joined the brothers when the Soviet Union collapsed, and he went to fight for a better world, first against the Russians in Chechnya and Dagestan during the first Chechen war in the mid-1990s. He then moved to Azerbaijan, where he was eventually arrested in 2004 on suspicion of maintaining contact with al Qaeda.

Even though Rizvan admits to fighting with Islamic organizations, he claims the actual basis for the arrest in Azerbaijan — illegal possession of weapons — was false. Authorities couldn’t find anything suspicious where he was living (Rizvan was staying at the time with his “brothers” in the jihad movement) but in his wife’s home they found a single hand grenade. Rizvan was charged with illegal weapons possession and sent to prison for several years.

In prison, he says he was tortured and deliberately housed in a cell with prisoners infected with tuberculosis. Rizvan took his case to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, accusing the authorities in Azerbaijan of depriving him of due process. The court eventually agreed, and asked the Azerbaijani government to pay Rizvan 2,400 euros in compensation, plus another 1,000 euros for court costs.

But when Rizvan was released from prison, he didn’t want to stay in Azerbaijan, fearing he would be rearrested, or even framed for a crime and again accused of terrorism. “Some of our people disappear and are never found,” he says. “There was one brother [who disappeared], and when he was brought for burial, a card was found showing that he was one of 30 people held in detention in Russia.”

In Russia, a warrant was issued for Rizvan’s arrest. Returning to his small mountain village was out of the question. If he goes back, his family will end up paying for what he does, anyhow. “They get to us through our families,” he says. He condemns those who refused to leave their own country and fight the infidels. This was the choice: either stay, or go abroad where “you can breathe freedom.”

“Man is born free,” Rizvan says. “We are slaves of God and not the slaves of people, especially those who are against their own people, and break the laws of God. There is only one law: the law of God.”

After his release from prison in Azerbaijan, Rizvan became the eternal wanderer, a rebel — and one of the brothers now in Ukraine. He came because Munayev, now head of the Dudayev battalion, decided the brothers should fight in Ukraine. “I am here today because my brother, Isa, called us and said, ‘It’s time to repay your debt,’” Rizvan says. “There was a time when the brothers from Ukraine came [to Chechnya] and fought against the common enemy, the aggressor, the occupier.”

That debt is to Ukrainians like Oleksandr Muzychko, who became one of the brothers, even though he never converted to Islam. Muzyczko, along with other Ukrainian volunteers, joined Chechen fighters and took part in the first Chechen war against Russia. He commanded a branch of Ukrainian volunteers, called “Viking,” which fought under famed Chechen militant leader Shamil Basayev. Muzychko died last year in Ukraine under mysterious circumstances.

Rizvan has been in Ukraine for almost a year, and hasn’t seen his family since he arrived. Their last separation lasted almost seven years. He’s never had time to raise children, or even really to get to know them. Although he’s a grandfather, he only has one son — a small family by Caucasian standards, but better for him, since a smaller family costs less. His wife calls often and asks for money, but Rizvan rarely has any to give her.

I N THE 17th century, the area to the east of the Dnieper River was known as the “wilderness,” an ungoverned territory that attracted refugees, criminals and peasants — a place beyond the reach of the Russian empire. Today, this part of Ukraine plays a similar role, this time for Muslim brothers. In eastern Ukraine, the green flag of jihad flies over some of the private battalions’ bases.

For many Muslims, like Rizvan, the war in Ukraine’s Donbass region is just the next stage in the fight against the Russian empire. It doesn’t matter to them whether their ultimate goal is a Caliphate in the Middle East, or simply to have the Caucuses free of Russian influence — the brothers are united not by nation, but by a sense of community and solidarity.

But the brothers barely have the financial means for fighting or living. They are poor, and very rarely receive grants from the so-called Islamic humanitarian organizations. They must earn money for themselves, and this is usually done by force. Amber is one of the ideas Rizvan has for financing the “company of brothers” fighting in eastern Ukraine — the Dudayev battalion, which includes Muslims from several nations, Ukrainians, Georgians, and even a few Russians.

The brothers had hoped the Ukrainian authorities would appreciate their dedication and willingness to give their lives in defense of Ukrainian sovereignty, but they miscalculated. Like other branches of fighters — Aidar, Azov and Donbass — the government, for the most part, ignores them. They’re armed volunteers outside the control of Kiev, and Ukraine’s politicians also fear that one day, instead of fighting Russians in the east, the volunteers will turn on the government in Kiev. So ordinary people help the volunteers, but it’s not enough. The fighters associated with the Ukrainian nationalist Right Sector get money, cars and houses from the rich oligarchs.

Rizvan has a different plan. He’s afraid that if they begin stealing from the rich, the Ukrainian government will quickly declare their armed branch illegal. He’s decided to work in the underground economy — uncontrolled by the state — which the brothers know best.

Back in the ’90s, the amber mines in the vast forests surrounding the city of Rivne were state-owned and badly run, so residents began illegally mining; it was a chance at easy money. Soon, however, the mafia took over. For the right daily fee, miners could work and sell amber to the mafia at a fixed price: $100 per kilogram. The mafia conspired with local militia, prosecutors and the governor. That was the way business worked.

As a result, although Ukraine officially produces 3 tons of amber annually, more than 15 tons are illegally exported to Poland each year. There, the ore is processed and sold at a substantial profit. The Rivne mines operate 24 hours a day. Hundreds of people with shovels in hand search the forest; they pay less to the mafia, but they extract less amber and earn less. The better off are those who have a water pump. Those people pump water at high pressure into the earth between the trees, until a cavity 2 to 3 meters deep forms. Amber, which is lighter than water, rises to the surface.

At one point, Rizvan disappeared in Rivne for several weeks. When he returned, he was disappointed; he’d failed to convince the local mafia to cooperate with the brothers’ fight for an independent Ukraine. But now, he has other arguments to persuade them. His men are holding up the mines, by not allowing anyone into the forest. Either the local gangsters share their profits, or no one will get paid.

Rizvan doesn’t like this job. He knows it won’t bring him any glory, and could land him in prison. He would have preferred to be among the fighters at the front lines, where everything is clear and clean. He says he can still fight, but he’s already too old to really endure the rigors of battle, even if he doesn’t want to admit it. He may still be physically fit, but fighters don’t usually last longer than a few years. Then they lose their strength and will to fight.

He has other orders from Munayev: he’s supposed to organize a “direct response group” in Kiev. The group will be a sort of rear echelon unit that take care of problems, like if someone tries to discredit the Dudayev battalion. It will also collect debts or scare off competition. There’s no doubt the new branch will work behind the lines, where there isn’t war, but there is money — as long as you know where to get it. If need be, the direct response group volunteers will watch over the mines in Rivne, or “will acquire” money from illegal casinos, which operate by the hundreds in Kiev.

Rizvan sends me photos of the group’s criminal exploits: they came into the casinos with weapons, and broke into the safes and slot machines. They disappeared quickly, and were never punished. The money went to food, uniforms, boots, tactical vests and other equipment necessary for the fighters. The mafia knows they can’t beat them at this game. The brothers are too good, because they are armed and experienced in battle. The police aren’t interested in getting involved either. In the end, it’s illegal gambling.

I told Rizvan that it’s a dangerous game. He laughed.

“It’s child’s play,” he says. “We used to do this in Dagestan. No one will lift a finger. Don’t worry.”

RIZVAN FINALLY DROVE me to see his “older brother,” to Isa Munayev, and his secret base located many miles west of Donetsk.

Riding in an old Chrysler that Rizvan bought in Poland, we drove for several hours, on potholed and snowy roads. Rizvan had glued to the car one of the emblems of Ukraine’s ATO, the so-called Anti-Terrorist Operation, which includes both soldiers and volunteers in the fight against separatists.

The bumper sticker allows him to drive through police traffic stops without being held up — or if he is stopped, they won’t demand bribes as they do from other drivers. The ATO sticker, Rizvan’s camouflage uniform, and a gun in his belt are enough to settle matters. Policemen salute him and wish him good luck.

He drives fast, not wanting to rest, sleep or even drink coffee. If he stops, it’s to check the compass on his belt to check the direction of Mecca. When it’s time to pray, he stops the car, turns off the engine, places his scarf in the snow and bows down to Allah.

Asked whether — after so many hardships, after so many years, and at his age, almost 60 now — he would finally like to rest, he answered indignantly, “How could I feel tired?”

There’s much more work to do, according to Rizvan. “There’s been a small result, but we will rest only when we’ve reached our goals,” he says. “I’m carrying out orders, written in the Holy Quran. ‘Listen to God, the Prophet.’ And I listen to him and do what I’m told.”

On the way into the city of Kryvyi Rih, we met with Dima, a young businessman — under 40 — but already worth some $5 million. He’s recently lost nearly $3 million from his business in Donetsk, which has been hit hard by the war. Dima worked for Igor Kolomoisky, one of the oligarchs who had been funding Ukraine’s volunteer battalions. Dima and Rizvan have only known each other for a short time. Rizvan claimed Dima owed him a lot of money, although it’s unclear from what. Rizvan kept bothering him, threatening to blackmail him. Finally, he got $20,000 from Dima.

That’s not nearly enough to support the Dudayev battalion. But Rizvan had something bigger to offer Dima: amber. Now, Dima was ready to talk. He came up with the idea to find buyers in the Persian Gulf, including wealthy sheikhs. They would like to sell an entire house of amber: furniture, stairs, floors, and inlaid stones. It only takes contacts, and Rizvan has them. The brothers from Saudi Arabia like to help the jihad in the Caucasus and the Middle East.

The next day, Rizvan was behind the wheel again. The old Chrysler barely moved, its engine overheated. A mechanic with an engineering degree and experience working in Soviet arms factories connected a plastic bottle filled with dirty water to the radiator using a rubber hose.

“I don’t know how long I’ll last,” Rizvan says suddenly. “It depends on God. I’ll probably die on this road. But I don’t have any other road to take.”

As a candidate for the presidency of France (which he attained in 2012), during his obligatory ritual appearance in 2011 before CRIF (France’s AIPAC), Nicolas Sarkozy gave his masters his understanding of French history.

The origin of the great French nation, he said, is not only indissolubly linked to the Jewish community, but the French land was Jewish before France was “France” and before it was christianized.

[Was Vercingétorix a Jew ? French national education and Fernand Nathan — the author of most of the pre-school and schoolbook texts in France — ought to research this important information. If he was not a Jew, he may have been an anti-semite. ]

Judaism was present in France, Sarkozy — the historian and philosopher of culture who wished to rise to the top position in the French government — informed his receptive audience, before France was “France” and before it was Christianized — it is a 2,000-years old presence. There were synagogues there during the Roman empire before there were churches and they were as elaborate as the later [there!] Baroque churches.

That suggests that France belongs to Jews by virtue of the Right of the First Comer/Occupier (Jus primi, or Recht des Ersten). Despite this rightful ownership by the Jewish minority, he went on, all along French history the Jews were invidiously and cruelly persecuted by the late-comers and this continued even after the French Revolution and the creation of the republic, as the Dreyfus case showed.

France is the France of Proust, Sarkozy added, and of many other Jews (reciting several other Jewish names), and of all the tremendous contributions made by Jews, which all the French get to inherit and enjoy (ungrateful curs that they are).

Thus, the French Jews contribute to the culture and growth of the country which is theirs: the Jewish community in France is the largest Jewish community in Europe. Any single attack on Jews or their faith must be considered an attack on France. An act of vandalism against a Jewish cemetery or synagogue is equivalent to the “Crystal Night” because it pressages the same horrors that followed that signal event.

So, he said all this in 2011 in the hallowed halls of CRIF and it did not have much of an echo in France at the time. It is important, however, to look back on it and see that while France was slumbering, Sarkozy passed the Fabius-Gayssot law that gagged the “other French” under severe penalties (fines and prison) to prevent them from questioning any of the “first comers'” impositions and fiats. It is also instructive to remember that after him, Manuel Valls stated loudly and clearly that if only 100,000 of Jews (of France’s 600,000) left, France would no longer be France and the republic would fail.

This serves to explain the slogan chanted on the Day of Ire by the demonstrators opposing to the highjacking of French politics, economy, culture and education by the Jewish power: “Juif, la France n’est pas a toi!”(Jew, France is not yours!)

But if France does not belong to the Jews, to whom does it belong? Much of what the “late-comers” contributed to French culture may have to be scrapped or at least severely edited by the Jewish guardians for its anti-semitism. Indeed, from Voltaire, who called the Jews “abominable” in his Dictionary of Philosophy and on to his “inheritors” (notably Balzac, also du Maurier, George Sand), many if not most French writers, we are told, are profoundly anti-semitic.How about that old anti-semite, Moliere? Isn’t Tartuffe, his best known character, a stereotypical Jew:

Tartuffe is called “The Impostor” or “The Hypocrite.” He is a superb scoundrel who can don any pose and become a master of it. As a religious ascetic, he convinces Orgon and Madame Pernelle that he is a devoutly pious and humble man; his obvious hypocrisy, however, is apparent to the reader and to the audience.

Tartuffe’s superiority lies in the fact that he can accurately analyze the weaknesses of his victims and then exploit these flaws for his own advantage. He is no simple or ignorant charlatan; instead, he is an alert and adept hypocrite who uses every means to bring about his success.

His eventual downfall is caused by his lust. Instead of making Tartuffe into an inhuman monster, Molière shows how lust causes the clever hypocrite to lower his mask and reveal his hypocrisy.

“We were here first,” and “You are all hardened anti-semites” so far trumps the pretensions of the French of being the real French (de souche). But the revolt is still young.

The US special services together with their “assistants” from Canada and Great Britain tried again to stage a coup in Venezuela. In the middle of February, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said the national security services frustrated the plans of US embassy and put an end to its hostile actions. As a result, a number of people were arrested, including Venezuelan air force officers and activists of radical opposition. The subversive activities were guided by Western diplomatic missions. The names of those behind the plot are known but they cannot be brought to justice being protected by diplomatic immunity. The President said the plotters wanted to assassinate him. The United States embassy guaranteed that the perpetrators would be granted asylum in America.

The Bolivarian National Intelligence Service (El Servicio Bolivariano de Inteligencia Nacional – SEBIN) had been warned about the conspiracy preparations. A Super Tucano aircraft (a light, highly agile Brazilian aircraft designed principally for pilot training and counterinsurgency operations) used before for special operations by Academi (former Blackwater), an American private military company, was handed over to plotters in the United States. The plane had the insignia of Venezuelan air force. It was armed and prepared to make a flight from Columbia to the island of Curacao where a US forward operating location is stationed. The CIA-recruited pilots, who betrayed the Bolivarian regime and their home country, learned well which targets they had to strike: the presidential palace, the buildings of ministries of Defense and General Staff and TV company TeleSUR. Security agencies found caches of arms, the equipment to provide guidance to the target and a video footage showing air force officers and opposition leaders involved in the plot addressing people. The video footage was given in Miami to journalist Patricia Poleo, a fierce opponent of the current Venezuelan government. She was to make it go on air but the plan was thwarted. The video material got into the hands of SEBIN operatives.

The video showed the plotters with balaclavas on their heads announcing the beginning of insurgency in the armed forces and the establishment of interim government. It was prepared to be made public by El Nacional newspaper at the time of coup. Three key figures of the Venezuelan opposition – Leopoldo López, the mayor of Caracas, Antonio Ledezma, the leader of Voluntad Popular (People's Will) and former member of parliament Maria Corina Machado signed and distributed a joint communique on February 11, just one day before the planned coup plot that President Nicolas Maduro denounced was to take place. All these people were known to be close to the United States. Entitled “The Call for a National Transition Agreement,” the statement calls for unification of Venezuelans behind a national plan aimed at supplanting the current socialist administration of President Nicolas Maduro. It says the country was going through hardships unparalleled in its history. It is the fault of regime that has been trying for sixteen years to impose a failed system. In the text the current government is described as a “failed” “corrupt” and “inefficient” regime, made up of an “elite of no more 100 people” who have pilfered public funds “which could have been used for the benefit of all”. It also states that Venezuela is on the brink of a “humanitarian crisis” whilst the Maduro government is “delegitimised” and in its “terminal phase”. It says nothing about the hard struggle against the United States trying to overthrow the regime fallen out of its favor. In the effort to achieve the goal, the US uses all any methods without hesitation, including economic sabotage, subversive activities against oil and energy sectors, never ending information war, organizing street protests in big cities and the use of local criminals and Columbian paramilitaries to destabilize the situation in the country. The list also includes artificially created shortages of food and basic consumer goods. The operations against Salvador Allende in Chile come to mind. The US uses the same dirty methods in Venezuela. Waiting in line has become a common occurrence in Venezuelan cities since 2013. Different prices in Columbian and Venezuelan shops are one of the reasons. Almost everything is smuggled to Columbia – from super cheap gas to corn meal and sugar. To some extent the military called by President Maduro to fight the cross border smuggling helped to control the situation.

According to the plotters’ plans, Maria Corina Machado was to head the new government. She has been patronized by former US President George Bush Jr. The Machado’s three minute meeting in the White House with the President of the United States in March 2005 attracted unusually high attention of pro-US media. Maria was painted as the most promising politician able to defeat President Hugo Chavez and become a Venezuelan President absolutely loyal to the United States. The revelations about the Machado’s ties with US intelligence services spoiled the plans. She was the founder, former vice president, and former president of the Venezuelan volunteer civil organization Sumate that used US-provided funds. When it was revealed that Machado got large sums of money from special services, she had to keep away from spotlight. Today the United States needs her again. She is ready to go to any length in an effort to overthrow Nicolas Maduro. Washington wants her to lead the country.

The planning has been done. A group of pro-US Latin American presidents is carrying out the mission. Former Mexican President Felipe Calderón, former Chilean President Sebastian Piñera and former Colombia President Andres Pastrana came to the country under the pretext of expressing their support for Leopoldo López. The real purpose was to see the real situation in the country. Nicolas Maduro never stood in their way. He only said that these people came to support ultra-right wing radicals who do not recognize the government and call for a bloody coup. Maduro warned that the visitors would have their hands soaked in blood if they hobnob with this kind of people.

Of those who signed the statement Machado is the only one who is still at large. A year ago Leopoldo López was put behind bars for inciting street protests resulting in dozens of victims. Antonio Ledezma was detained a few days ago charged with involvement in coup attempt. The conditions of detainment are not so tough; he can continue the struggle against the Bolivarian regime. Recently he sent a letter to media outlets calling for continuing protests and peaceful struggle against Nicolas Maduro to make the current President resign. In the letter he stuck rigidly to the constitution. It says "We must keep up the struggle in the street, in a civil manner with the constitution in our hands and with the truth in front of us" Ledezma wrote. "They [the government] have the weapons but we have the ideas to unite the Venezuelan people. Violence is a pointless vacuum that leads nowhere." He wants no mercy and calls for solidarity to protect democratic values in Venezuela. He stands out among Venezuelan politicians for his aggressive style and vindictiveness. It is suggested that if the plotters won, he would have headed the Interior Ministry to cleanse the national politics from Bolivarians, Chavistas and other elements hostile to the United States.

After the leading plotters were arrested and their ties with special services and embassies of the United States, Canada and Great Britain were revealed, Nicolas Maduro could say with certainty that another coup attempt orchestrated by Washington was effectively foiled. The tension in the relationship with the United States remains. In December 2014, President Obama endorsed sanctions against top officials of Venezuela accused by Washington of human rights violations. Maduro warned Americans that arbitrary sanctions and other attempts to exert pressure would deteriorate the bilateral relationship even further. He said the United States tried to stage coups in Venezuela a number of times. The US interference into the internal affairs of other countries has become a constant factor to negatively affect the situation in the world.

Jen Psaki, the spokesperson for the United States Department of State, as usually rejected all the accusations of US involvement into the conspiracy to organize a coup in Venezuela. “Well, I think we’ve seen continued accusations, no question, that are false and baseless. And our view continues to be that political transitions must be democratic, constitutional, peaceful, and legal. We do not support a political transition in Venezuela by non-constitutional means. We’re not promoting unrest in Venezuela, nor are we attempting to undermine Venezuela’s economy or its government. And this is a continued effort – ongoing, because I do feel like we talk about these incidents once a week at least – about – of the Venezuelan Government to try to distract attention from the country’s economic and political problems and focus and try to distract and make these false accusations.”

Meanwhile, the investigation continues. Nicolas Maduro says Antonio Ledezma tried to abuse his position to organize a violent coup and destabilize the country. New arrests are to follow. The government of Venezuela is adamant in its desire to prevent the events unfolding according to a scenario worked out by the United States Central Intelligence Agency.

The judge dismissed the case, citing a lack of evidence. Both de Kirchner and her Jewish foreign minister Hector Timerman were the ‘criminals’ in the case. Both have denied their involvement in shielding Iran’s government from responsibility in the attack.

Alberto Nissman (Jewish), country’s prosecutor, was appointed by late president Nestor Kirchner, an Israeli ally, to clear Israeli Mossad involvement in the 1994 bombing of AMIA which also housed Mossad office, and put the blame on Lebanese Islamic Resistance Hizbullah backed by Iran. Nissman visited the US and Israel several times during his 10-year long investigation against Iran. Failed to find any credible proof to implicate Iran, last year he accused de Kirchner for shielding Iran in order to secure an oil-import deal. Fearing Nissman’s failure to prove the case against de Kircher, CIA-Mossad agent killed him in ‘suicide look-like before the day he was scheduled to appear in a court to prove his accusations against country’s president.

Last year, before even appearing in an Argentina court, Nissman appeared in Israeli Supreme Court with the proof that the former Iranian president Ayatullah Ali Rafsanjani (mentor of the current ‘moderate’ president Hassan Rouhani) and eight of his ministers masterminded, financed and organized the AMIA attack through Hizbullah.

Argentina Congress has passed de Kirchner proposed bill to scrap country’s intelligence agency by 131:71 votes. The agency was infiltrated by CIA and Mossad agents during the presidency of her husband Nestor Kirchner and Carlos Menem. The new agency would be responsible to the parliament.

On February 26, the Business Insider reported that two big Jewish banks at the Wall Street JPMorgan and Deutsche Bank sent a letter warning potential investors not to invest in the proposed Argentina bond offering. The offering was suspended as result of Jewish Lobby’s campaign, reported the Wall Street Journal on February 26, 2015.

Argentina has a very sad history of being friendly toward the Zionist entity and accommodating to its tiny (0.5% of Argentina population) extremely powerful Jewish community. Pope Francis as Archbishop of Buenos Aires was a close friend of local Jewish community. Israeli Mossad misused this friendship when it abducted Adolf Eichmann (aka Ricardo Klement), a German-born Argentine citizen.

Eichmann, a former high-ranking Nazi official – fluent in Yiddish and Hebrew languages – was intensely involved in negotiations during WW II between Germany’s SS (SuchutzStafflen) and key Zionist organizations – working together on one very specific common goal: getting as many Jews out of Europe as possible. Eichmann accompanied by his wife had visited British mandate Palestine on the invitation of the World Zionist Organization.

One week ago, when reporting on the latest bizarre plan presented by the Pentagon, namely providing Syrian rebels (but only the moderate ones, not the jihadists like al Nusra, or, well, ISIS) with B-1B Bomber air support in their attacks on ISIS, when we wrote that this "means in the coming weeks and months look forward to a surge in false flag "attacks" blamed on the Assad regime, aiming to give Obama validation to expand the "War against ISIS" to include Syria's regime as well."

We didn't have long to wait: in an entirely unsourced Time article written today by Aryn Baker, the Middle East Bureau Chief, the stage for the second attempt at invading Assad regime is finally set.

The article, titled "Why Bashar Assad Won’t Fight ISIS" is essentially an essay that, as the title suggests "proves" that the Syrian leader is, in fact, quite close with ISIS and derives strategis benefits from his relationship, which is why he won't attack them, and thus by implication is just as bad as ISIS and worthy of America's wrath.

How does Baker build up her propaganda? First, she cits a "Sunni businessman who is close to the regime but wants to remain anonymous for fear of repercussions from both ISIS supporters and the regime" and who "trades goods all over the country so his drivers have regular interactions with ISIS supporters and members in Raqqa, the ISIS stronghold in Syria, and in ISIS-controlled areas like Dier-ezzor." According to this Syrian version of Amazon:

The regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad has long had a pragmatic approach to the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria. Even from the early days the regime purchased fuel from ISIS-controlled oil facilities, and it has maintained that relationship throughout the conflict. “Honestly speaking, the regime has always had dealings with ISIS, out of necessity.”

"Honestly speaking" of course being used quite loosely, considering that it is by now no secret that ISIS, in the words of General Wesley Clark, "got started through funding from our friends and allies", most notablyQatar and Saudi Arabia, and according to some even the CIA is involved so, no: honestly speaking, if anything, the Assad regime has been doing its best to stay away from ISIS, which at least on paper, was created as a result of extremist Al Nusra factions, who were fighting Assad in 2013, and were funded and weaponized by the US.

Of course, none of that is mentioned. What is, however, duly emphasized is the goalseeked conclusion that Assad and the Islamic State are like two peas in a pod:

Assad does not see ISIS as his primary problem, the businessman says. “The regime fears the Free Syrian Army and the Nusra Front, not ISIS. They [the FSA and Nusra] state their goal is to remove the President. But ISIS doesn’t say that. They have never directly threatened Damascus.” As the businessman notes, the strikes on ISIS targets are minimal. “If the regime were serious about getting rid of ISIS, they would have bombed Raqqa by now. Instead they bomb other cities, where the FSA is strong.” That said, the businessman does not believe that the regime has a formal relationship with ISIS, just a pragmatic one. “The more powerful ISIS grows, the more they are useful for the regime. They make America nervous, and the Americans in turn see the regime as a kind of bulwark against ISIS.”

Actually, the "Americans" see ISIS as the perfect false flag placeholder to build up yet another case about invading Damascus, after the humiliation of the bumbled attempt to use a doctored YouTube clip showing paid actors following what the CIA guaranteed was an Assad "chemical weapon" attack as a pretext to launch an invasion on Syria in the first attempt to topple Assad. It took an escalation that involved numerous Russian ships side by side with US cruisers in the Mediterranean before John Kerry realized that building Qatar's nat gas pipeline to Europe is not worth rising World War III over, and promptly backed off.

This time, ISIS is the bait.

Back to the Time article, where next we get the next "source" of information:

A senior Western diplomat who specializes in the Syrian civil war agrees that ISIS is seen as an asset by Assad. “They will do whatever it takes to devalue the opposition, even if it means strengthening ISIS. They know that if it comes to choosing between the black flag [of ISIS] and Damascus, the international community will choose Damascus.” And the strategy has worked extremely well. “The way it’s going now, it’s a matter of months, not even a year,that the moderate opposition is so weakened that it won’t be a factor anymore. So in just a few months from now the regime will be able to achieve its strategic goal of forcing the world to choose between Damascus and the black flags.”

Actually, according to that logic, the "international community" will choose both Damascus and the "black flags", in fact the community will be delighted to have the "flags" as a cover in an invasion, both air, sea and ground, toppling Assad and replacing him with yet another US-puppet regime (whose fate, following such sterling examples as Egypt, Libya and Iraq will be just spectacular), one which will be glad to accept Qatar and Syria hush money, while thousands of kilometers of pipes are laid under the territory in attempt to dethrone Gazprom as the provider of first and last resort to Europe... which as a reminder is what it is all about.

The anonymous "western diplomat" continues:

... by ignoring the conflict between the Syrian opposition and the Assad regime to focus purely on ISIS may solve problems in the short term, says the diplomat, “but there will be more problems to come. These are the ingredients for a further escalation of the conflict — alienating large parts of the Sunni population, so that they have no choice but to join ISIS. Not for ideological reasons, but because they will do whatever it takes to overthrow the regime in Damascus.” Not only that, it will widen the geographical boundaries of the conflict by making this a fight of all Sunnis. “It’s a clear recipe for further escalation well beyond the geographical boundaries of the current conflict.”

Which is why in order to prevent further escalation in the future, the US will be delighted to provide much more escalation right now.

And here is the piece de resistance of the article that may as well have been written by a 6th grader who is about to flunk propaganda class:

Damascus believes that once it has neutralized most of the opposition, it can then defeat ISIS with ease. “ISIS alone, the regime can deal with them. What Assad wants is international recognition of his legitimacy as Syria’s President,” says the businessman. “When the war is over, he can easily handle ISIS with the help of Hizballah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.”

So let's get this straight:

A "terrorist" group which was created and funded by US allies in the middle east (there are many) is fighting a war on behalf of a regime that the US and its allies in the middle east are desperately trying to topple; a "terrorist" group which until recently did not exist and which, inexplicably according to the author, Assad refuses to fight because.... unlike the US he has not seen the dreadful beheading movies which lead to so much daily water cooler talk across the US?

Ths US now believes that "ISIS is seen as an asset by Assad" and that the moderate (this distinction is key: their flag has a pink skull and crossbones as opposed to the red one used by the "non-moderate") opposition which spawned ISIS in the power vacuum following the incomplete first US invasion of Syria in the symmer of 2013, is about to be destroyed by the same ISIS.

Assad is confident he can "defeat ISIS with ease" once he has destroyed his so-called moderate enemies; the same ISIS which the US has been "fighting" now for half a year, and achieved absolutely nothing.

We know all those due to an essay of amateur propaganda caliber, which derives its entire narrative and conclusions based on two anonymous sources.

At this point we probably speak for everyone when we say: just invade Syria already, and let's proceed to the inevitable, and quite understandable, Russian retaliation, because frankly this endless propaganda and false-flaggery is now as obvious and pathetic as the Greek default which is also about 5 years overdue.

Producing breaking news, features, analysis and investigative stories from the Middle East, Pakistan and Afghanistan for the world’s most influential English language weekly newsmagazine.

Frequent reporting travel to countries affected by the changes of the Arab Spring, from Syria to Saudi, Yemen, Qatar, Bahrain, Egypt, and Libya, as well as continued reporting in Pakistan and Afghanistan, which I have been covering since 2003.

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In what has become an all-too familiar story to those with an attention span that goes back farther than one week, it has once again been revealed that a famed terrorist was known to and in close contact with Western intelligence agencies before and, presumably, during his notorious acts.

27-year-old Mohammed Emwazi has been identified as “Jihadi John,” the masked terrorist who appeared in the numerous staged beheading propaganda films depicting the killing of Western “aid workers,” “journalists,” and others.

It was already largely accepted that the terrorist star of the videos was from Britain. However, the exact identity of “Jihadi John” was not released to the public until Wednesday.

Already, the story is being presented as a failure of intelligence services and a tragic oversight that could only have been remedied with even greater police state powers being granted to the UK government.

With such ridiculous statements coming from “experts,” and “officials” suggesting that the UK intelligence agencies were simply too overwhelmed and overburdened to catch the suspicious behavior of Emwazi, the only logical conclusion that can be arrived at is that the UK intelligence apparatus need more powers to surveil, more money with which to do so, and, presumably, more authority to detect and prevent “pre-crime.”

With lines like “we simply can’t monitor all of these people sufficiently” and “we can’t monitor everyone” as the official line from the UK government and mainstream British media, the official narrative is inherently contradictory, especially considering the fact that the UK government and GCHQ is in fact capable of monitoring everyone, which they do in an almost identical fashion to theAmerican NSA.

Indeed, the statement by the 17-year-old daughter of David Haines, the Scottish “aid worker” allegedly killed by Jihadi John in the propaganda video, is being used to drive this point home in the minds of the general public. Haines’ daughter says that she doesn’t really blame UK intelligence or law enforcement agencies and that “If they'd known his name earlier they could've stopped him going - but they can't and once he's captured I think there will be a lot of happy faces.”

But they did know his name earlier. Mohammed Emwazi was well-known to UK intelligence agencies and police.

In fact, there is a reasonable amount of evidence – the track record of the UK and US government in terms of false flag terror attacks involving the use of Muslim patsies being one portion of that evidence – that not only was Jihadi John known to agencies and police before his travels to Syria but that he was working with these very same intelligence agencies in doing so.

The story goes that, upon graduating from the University in 2009, Emwazi and a few friends flew to Tanzania on a safari trip. Upon landing in Dar es Salaam, Emwazi was arrested and sent back to Britain.

On the way back, he stopped over in Amsterdam where he claims that he was accused by MI5 of trying to go to Somalia, apparently suggesting that he was going to join the group Al Shabaab while there. Emwazi also claims that he was subsequently harassed so much by security agencies that he was forced to complain to the Independent Police Complaints Commission, a report of which there is a record.

He stated that MI5 knew “about me; where I lived, what I did, and the people I hanged around with.” He also claimed that MI5 attempted to “turn” him, meaning that the agency wanted to recruit him to work for them.

In 2009, Emwazi apparently moved back to Kuwait and got a job at a computer firm there. When he returned to Britain in June, 2010, he was detained and not allowed to return to Kuwait. Somehow, despite having been placed on a terrorism watch list and being banned from leaving the UK, Emwazi allegedly managed to travel to Syria where he committed the alleged terror attacks of which he now stands accused.

The Daily Mail reports that “As it was claimed Emwazi had spoken to police and security services three times in a year, it emerged that senior members of the security services could be called to give evidence to the Intelligence and Security Committee about contact between him and MI5.”

The Daily Mail continues by writing that

Asim Qureshi, research director at the rights group Cage told the Washington Post: 'Mohammed was quite incensed by his treatment, that he had been very unfairly treated'.Emwazi claimed in emails that he was repeatedly approached by the security services over the course of the following year but he said he refused to co-operate and denied he had any links to terrorism.

[...]

In an email to Mr Qureshi he said: 'I feel like a prisoner, only not in a cage, in London. A person imprisoned & controlled by security service men, stopping me from living my new life in my birthplace & country, Kuwait'.

Another friend said: 'He was upset and wanted to start a life elsewhere. He at some stage reached the point where he was really just trying to find another way to get out.'Another friend said that Emwazi later tried to travel to Saudi Arabia to teach English in 2012 but again stopped from leaving.

He was 'desperate' to leave Britain and 'was ready to exhaust every single kind of avenue within the machinery of the state to bring a change for his personal situation', Mr Qureshi said.

Mr Qureshi said he last heard from him that year and said the Jihadi John suspect believed 'actions were taken to criminalize him and he had no way to do something against these actions'.

Soon afterwards he vanished and is believed to have travelled to Syria, where he may now be ISIS' figurehead.

In other words, given the track record of Western intelligence agencies when it comes to acts of terror at home or abroad, one would be justified in wondering whether or not this “harassment” of which Emwazi complained was actually an attempt to recruit him to act as a face for terror, an actual terror fighter, or patsy in their war against the Syrian people and the secular government of Assad.

It is not fully known whether Emwazi had fundamentalist sympathies before his encounter with UK intelligence services or whether his encounter with UK intelligence services was the precursor to the fundamentalism or, at least, the perception of such fundamentalism. Considering the shaky narrative provided by the mainstream – that Emwazi was arrested, harassed, denied having anything to do with terrorism, was arrested again, harassed so much that he desperately wanted to leave Britain, placed on a terrorism watch list, and then suddenly appeared in Syria as “Jihadi John,” there is ample reason to wonder whether or not Emwazi was coerced and/or forced into his role.

That is, of course, assuming that “Jihadi John” is actually Emwazi at all, a claim that, in actuality, has very little in the way of evidence to back it up.

Still, it should be remembered that the connection between British intelligence and al-Qaeda is by no means a new one. For instance, in 1996, British intelligence was involved in the direction of al-Qaeda for the purposes of an attempted assassination of Muammar Ghaddaffi. Ever since, the London connection to Islamic terrorism, terrorist recruitment, and the training of terrorists has been well-known in honest and informed researching circles.

Indeed, the very concept of Islamic Fundamentalism as a fighting force was largely a British idea which took the form of the establishment of the Muslim Brotherhood to combat Arab nationalism early in the 20th century.

Whether or not Jihadi John was legitimately a radical fundamentalist (through the network of Mosques acting as British intelligence fronts[1]) or whether he was merely blackmailed and bullied into doing the bidding of UK intelligence in Syria, the fact remains that his actions were entirely coordinated by NATO intelligence.

One need only to consider the many “coincidences” that benefited NATO forces as a result of the propaganda videos that “Jihadi John” had a cameo role in.

Remember, when the United States was “debating” the idea of becoming more directly involved in Syria and Iraq, particularly in the form of bombing civilian and government infrastructure and openly funding the death squads they claim to be fighting, a video allegedly showing the beheading of James Foley was released resulting in widespread anger and indignation amongst a general public who were temporarily yanked away from reality TV long enough to view it.

Likewise, when the British seemed hesitant to directly join the imperialist bombing coalition, a video was released allegedly showing the beheading of a British citizen, Alan Henning, also causing widespread indignation amongst the public and shoring up support for British military involvement in Iraq and Syria.

Either ISIS and Jihadi John are the absolute dumbest public relations operatives in world history, or the actions of ISIS and Jihadi John are directly controlled by NATO for propaganda, geopolitical, and military purposes since it is only NATO who has benefited from the videos and the alleged beheadings.

The timing of ISIS and Jihadi John’s actions – always in line with the goals of the NATO faction of the world oligarchy – is clearly the result of the latter.